At the Roseland Ballroom Thursday, for the first of two sold-out concerts, the leader of L.A.’s seminal hard-core band laid down the kind of show every young punk rocker dreams of playing.

His guitar chops were precise yet raw, and his vocals had the kind of zeal that said he lived through every good time and bad time he sang about.

In the final encore, when he hissed the line, “This is the true story of my life,” Ness wasn’t kidding.

That honesty and musical fervor wasn’t lost on the mostly male, punks-grown-old audience who slammed hard in the mosh pit, yet no doubt got up early to go to work the next day. This show was breathing, sweating, grunting proof that youth is a state of mind.

Right from the opening song – a cover of “Ring of Fire” – Ness and his band had the house in a fast boil as the oldsters, fists pumping, slammed and shouted back at Ness, “I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down, down and the flames got higher.”

In fact, it was the perfect song to open with, because the words reflected how Social D seized the house and pulled it down into the band’s world, where sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are the trinity and love remains the Holy Grail always just out of reach.

Maybe that’s why Ness titled the band’s current album “Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” That disc’s tunes – “Like Reach for the Sky,” “Nickels and Dimes” and “Highway 101” – were among the night’s best. Though they are freshly minted, they captured the classic Social D sound – punk with a dash of Nashville – and featured a rebellious, anti-authority attitude.

Some of that same spirit was evident in the young Boston band, the Explosion, that opened the concert. One of the most promising baby acts in music today, they understood how to move the decidedly older house, and their songs “I Know” and “Here I Am” were excellent.

The much-hyped psychobilly trio Tiger Army held the middle set on the bill. Unfortunately, they never roared – and the audience seemed ready to shoot them for a set that lay flatter than a tiger-skin rug.